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Pump Your Breaks! Five Reasons Why You Need To Take A Break From Dating

When It’s Time To Take A Break From Dating: Sometimes we go from one relationship to the next without taking a break. It can be because we are afraid to be alone, or bowing to societal pressures that tell us we have to be in a relationship, in order to be okay. It’s often because we are hurt and want to use the excitement of a new relationship to distract us from the pain of the last one ending. Rebounding, jumping from one relationship to the next, usually produces less than satisfactory results. Among them are:

Due to judgment clouded by emotional pain, it’s easy to choose someone who is completely wrong for you as your next partner and be blind to their flaws.

Because you haven’t processed the raw emotions left by the ending of the previous relationship, you are left off-balance and more likely to react inappropriately to emotions and situations with your new lover.

Without time out for reflection that would give you insight into where your last romancewent wrong, it’s common to repeat the same mistakes continuously. It’s as if you are playing the same script out again and again with the same character, just different actors.

Although you may meet a great person as a rebound, it’s likely that you won’t be in the proper place to be a good partner to them and may unintentionally sabotage the relationship.

Worst of all, you lose touch with yourself and forget that you are ultimately the only person who can make you happy. Because you’ve forgotten this, you put all the pressure on those outside of you (usually most of the pressure goes onto your romantic partner) to create your happiness. This is the kiss of death to relationships as no one likes to be with someone who is needy.

I’ve definitely been guilty of this type of insanity. Here are a couple of examples and how it turned out for me:

Repeating The Same Relationship: In my early 20s, I never put men first in my life. Relationships weren’t a big deal to me but I always had someone in my life. And I know I was hurting these men because they all knew I could take them or leave them. But I kept dating, even if it meant hurting them. Then one day I got a big shock of reality. I had been dating this guy for almost two years when he found out that I had been cheating on him. He was devastated. When I saw how hurt he was, it hurt me. It wasn’t that I wanted him back—I cheated on him for a reason. It was excruciating to know that I was the reason behind someone feeling that much pain.

That’s when I decided to take a break from dating until I discovered what I wanted out of it. I was only 24-years-old at the time.

So for a few years, I took a break. I went out with a few people but I told them up front that I absolutely wasn’t looking for anything serious. At least I was finally being honest with them and myself for once. I knew exactly what I wanted for myself: world travel and my career. But when it came to relationships, I just didn’t care one way or another about dating. I could take it or leave it because I was busy living my life. However, I realized if I was going to start dating again, I needed to change my attitude since I didn’t want to hurt anyone intentionally.